6. Picture This by Lynda Barry (D&Q) $29.95 – Although I doubt this book needs any introduction, I’ll go ahead and quack a little about Lynda Barry’s exciting follow up to What It Is. These books are sort of a portable pair of life-coaches on the means and meaning in personal artistic process. Where Scott McCloud tries to crack open all the formal and technical elements of comics-making step-by-step in his “Understanding Comics” series, Lynda Barry is using rather sub-conscious processes to burrow deep into the intuitive realms of how and why content is created. It’s a pretty amorphous thing to get a handle on and Barry’s collaged approach reflects the subtleties of the fog while still assembling a book on “how to draw”. Picture This allows her to dig into the core of creating without being didactic or judgemental, writing the secret missing chapter to every “How to Draw Comics” book ever published. -EF